CURRENT EVENTS

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This means that in cases of wage-theft, unsafe working conditions and systematic harassment, workers would not be able to band together to sue gigantic corporations whose net worth dwarfs their own a millionfold or more, and would have to individually pay lawyers to argue each of their cases, one at a time.

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(*Finally The Supremes get in step with The Trump Administration , and give P.O.T.U.S. Trump a well deserved , hard fought for WIN !)

The shooter made his initial court appearance Friday by video link. The alleged shooter, who is accused of capital murder of multiple people and aggravated assault on a public servant, was denied bail.

A 17-year-old high school student identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fire at the Houston-area Santa Fe High School with a shotgun and a handgun, killing 10 people and leaving another 14 people wounded – including a school police officer who confronted the suspect during the attack at Santa Fe High School.

The Associated Press reported that local hospitals confirmed a total of 14 people treated for injuries related to the shooting, with two listed in critical condition on Saturday at the University of Texas Medical Branch, according to a tweet from the hospital.

But it’s unclear whether all the victims were shot by the suspect, or whether some were shot by deputies during the crossfire. Trochesset said authorities are waiting for the medical examiner’s autopsies to make that determination.

A “decent amount of cameras in the school” will help investigators piece together a timeline, Trochesset said.

In an early 2018 piece, Mises Wire editor Ryan McMaken pointedly articulates the fact that official U.S. government documents indicate a decline nationally in homicides and school shooting since the 90’s which means that schools are actually far safer today than they were over two decades ago.

Excellent piece covering the last couple of weeks in the Mideast.
Pretty well sums it up! Trump and Putin in Netanyahu's pocket.

The arrival of Benjamin Netanyahu on that day was a heaven-sent gift for Putin. Here was the man who could call upon the US Senate, who can deal with the US President, and now he came in person, Mr World Jewry personified, supporting the Russian narrative of history

Netanyahu repaid his host by a missile strike upon Syria, almost right away. This is a standard Israeli procedure: upon any high-level meeting with the Russians, bomb their allies, so they would know who is more important. They bombed Syria while Russian Defence Minister Shoygu’s jet was still in flight from Moscow to Tel Aviv.
Putin swallowed it, and promised to refrain from supplying S-300 to Syria, despite his Chief of Staff’s words.

'Sharenting' is an online trend where parents post pictures of their children
Images at birthday parties and in school uniform reveals personal details
This information could be used by fraudsters later on in life
Personal details revealed by parents could allow criminals to hack bank accounts, decode passwords and take out loans in their name

Intellihub Editor’s note: This is not a good idea for obvious reasons.

Three days before 10 people died in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. a small group of students at Bowie High School in Maryland pulled a senior prank that the local police chief called “reckless.”

Intimate shots are part of Harry and Meghan's ongoing royal revolution launched from Windsor on Saturday
Newlyweds shown in a romantic pose on East Terrace of Windsor Castle basking in excitement of wedding

Kensington Palace has released three official pictures of Harry and Meghan
One black-and-white shot shows the Meghan leaning back against Harry
In contrast, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge both stood upright in couple snap

Intimate shots are part of Harry and Meghan's ongoing royal revolution launched from Windsor on Saturday
Newlyweds shown in a romantic pose on East Terrace of Windsor Castle basking in excitement of wedding

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., arrives to accept the Republican presidential nomination at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 4, 2008. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
At first, John McCain couldn’t hear what his some of his supporters were yelling. The roar of the crowd often made it too loud to hear anything, and he was already hard of hearing in his left ear, a condition that dated to his days as a Navy pilot and no doubt worsened because of the beatings he suffered during his 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Hillary Clinton, who paid for an opposition research dossier which was used by the Obama administration to justify surveiling her political opponent, Donald Trump, and later to smear him as the sitting President, will receive Harvard's prestigious Radcliffe Medal on Friday for having a "transformative impact on society," according to the Ivy League university.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Oh yes, this woman has been "transformative" in taking the Democratic party as low ethically as it could almost possibly go, in an effort to steal the election; and she still lost.

The Meuller investigation, though which she and her cohorts plotted to take President Trump down, through impeachment, is running off the rails, and headlong into oblivion; and the troll they had infiltrate the Republican 2016 campaign has been outed and named.

She has left the Democratic party severely injured, in a series of self-inflicted wounds by the people around her, starting with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as Chair of the DNC, and her literally stealing of the nomination from Bernie Sanders to insure that Clinton got the nomination.

IF the Democratic leadership had two brain cells to rub together, they would be looking for a pro-peace candidate in 2020, and I have just the right person for them; that person would be Tulsi Gabbard, a House Representative from the state of Hawaii. She is very bright; a pro-peace Veteran, and a woman with Samoan-American heritage.

And trust me, if President Trump's foreign policy continues in its belocose, war-centric manner, causing even more wars than the ones we cannot seem to win in which we are still enmeshed (read: Afghanistan; Yemen; Somalia; and Iraq), the American people will be eager to elect a pro-peace candidate.

Earlier this month, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) which monitors global military spending, released its latest report. To no one's surprise, the US topped the list, with more spending than the next seven biggest spenders combined.

According to the report, in 2017 the US spent 610 billion dollars, while China spent 228 billion. The rest of the list engaged in miniscule amounts of spending by comparison, with Russia spending 66 billion, the UK spending 47 billion, and Japan spending 45 billion — to list a few examples.

Viewed in light of the deterrent power of the US's enormous nuclear stockpile, US military capability is far greater than even the SIPRI report suggests.

Nevertheless, there are some in Washington who every year cry wolf over how the US military is being stripped to the bone, and that the US must "rebuild" its military capability.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The issue isn't more money; it is getting every penny's worth of taxpayer dollars in what the DOD is already spending.

The corporate weapons industry culture believes that it is just fine to deliver products which are obsolete at the time of delivery; products which don't work as advertised; and that have insane cost overruns, breaking the budget. And why do these people believe this?!?

Because they contribute so intensely, overtly and covertly, to national political campaigns,they never think that things need to change, and this has put the US military in a position falling behind Russia and China in development, because their weapons manufacturers are delivering what their countries are asking of them, and even more.

We need that to start happening in the US military/industrial complex, and quickly.

Corporate leaders in this industry need to understand that in the next phase of US weapons development, they either deliver equipment on time, within budget, and working as advertised, or... the US government could well nationalize its weapons development.

Brendan O'Callaghan was seriously injured in the deadly New Jersey bus crash
The 11-year-old remains in hospital after suffering a fractured temple bone, broken collarbone, punctured lung and a bruised orbital bone
His father, Arnie O'Callaghan, said the boy's first words to him were: 'Daddy, am I going to die?'
Fifth-grader doesn't remember last week's crash and thinks he is in a bad dream
Young hockey fan smiled for the first time over the weekend when he received a surprise gift from the New York Rangers

In what will likely be remembered as an epic middle finger to America's unions, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Monday - in a decision split along ideological lines - that businesses can force employees into individual arbitration to resolve disputes, virtually eliminating the threat of a class-action lawsuit.

The Washington Post described the ruling as "an important outcome for business interests."

The decision could make life much harder for unions fighting for better conditions and wages.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This decision was not the wisest the Supremes could have made here.

While I am not necessarily union-centric, I can see where they have helped many average working Americans have a better quality of life than they would have without unions existing.

Amid all the liberal media's meltdown over President Trump's "interference" in the 'investigation' by "hereby demanding" that potential crimes by Obama's FBI be investigated - and The Deep State's insistence that any exposure of the already-leaked name of the Trump campaign spy would damage national security - The Wall Street Journal refuses to back off its intense pressure to get to the truth.

President Trump dropped a three-tweet quote this morning...

“John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the...

Webmaster's Commentary:

This whole fetid, stinking stable that is corruption in in American politics, needs to be mucked out, and quickly.

If heads roll (metaphorically only, please: I am a peace activist, after all!), then so be it.

The horrific politicization of the FBI, under Obama's watch, was a phenominal disgrace to this country, and imperils this country's future.

It's one of those inevitable and awkward moments that so well exposes the hypocrisy of Western progressive academic institutions aligning themselves closely with autocratic gulf sheikhdoms.

While speaking to graduates at NYU Abu Dhabi on Sunday, former US Secretary of State John Kerry opined that "true civil discourse" is under threat around the world, yet in an irony that appeared lost on him the whole event was censored by NYU, possibly under orders from United Arab Emirates authorities.

Less than a week after Stefan Halper was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign, public records reveal that the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This proves, as if it needed any more proof, that the American government has become corrupt beyond repair.

And President Obama paid this guy out of the Department of Defense?!?

Taxpayer dollars were used to spy on the Trump campaign?!?

Absoflippinglutely unbelievable, but perfectly predictable from the previous administration!!!!!

IF the Democrats are going to be running midterms on an "anti-corruption" platform, they had better get their own damed house in order.

Speaking to Yale graduates over the weekend, the former candidate for president urged the class to stop the spread of fake news and help support journalism by paying for it.

"It means calling out actual fake news when we see it and supporting brave journalists and their reporting maybe even by subscribing to a newspaper," she said.

As Michelle Wolf, the comedian who attended the White House correspondents dinner, noted, President Donald Trump's election has been a boon to most of the media business. The New York Times revenue topped $1 billion in 2017. In the final quarter of last year, it signed up 157,000 new subscribers, taking full-year subscriptions to 2.6 million.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Oh, yeah; the same corporately controlled papers which declared, in lock step with the Bush Administration that "Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction", and refuse, en masse, to report on the US-enabled, Saudi genocide in Yemen?!?

OF COURSE, this is precisely the kind of media Clinton would want Americans to rely upon, when the independent media honestly reported the truth about the Clinton Foundation before the election, and the big presstitutes did not!!

There is increasing concern about the health of our children among some parents, and our new book explores the perfect storm we have created that may be the culprit.

This storm is formed by a toxic mix of;

1) outdated medical models that struggle with chronic diseases and often overlook food;
2) an embattled scientific community, some of whom have obscured questions about the safety of GM foods and their associated pesticides; and
3) frustrated parents and children who are finding solutions by doing something so simple as changing their diet.
Of course, the causes of children’s disorders are many. But food plays an enormous role. Consider the possibility that some of the food we are feeding our children is loaded with chemical ingredients that are impairing our kid’s guts.

Gut feeling

Webmaster's Commentary:

To all the parents with kids who read this blog; please throw out your chemical pesticides, and ask the people at the hardware store you frequent, for a natural, working alternative.

And please, for the health of your kids (and your own health), switch to eating organically. Both the local supermarket, and the big box store where Mike and I do our weekly pilgrimage, have started listening to customers on this issue, and are bringing in a better assortment of organic foods as a result.

The SCO is largely a story about Russia and China coming together, but it’s also more than that. Its emergence is testing Sir Halford Mackinder’s 1904 thesis:

‘Whoever rules East Europe, will rule Heartland; whoever rules the Heartland, will rule the World Island; whoever rules the World Island, will rule the world.’

Webmaster's Commentary:

Economically, and geopolitically, this institution will give the US government a real run for its money, which many of its member nations, particularly China and Russia, are going to be avoiding like the plague henceforward in international transactions.

The AUMF 2018 would replace AUMF’s 2001 and 2002 which proponents suggest would remove the onerous Constitutional responsibility from a self-proclaimed over-burdened Congress from voting to approve every single separate act of war. While final approval of the AUMF 2018 represents a “Forever Vote,” product of a low vibration consciousness, the ACLU, which should be leading a vigorous national campaign against the proposal, appears absent from the debate.

Approval of a one-size-fits-all AUMF will greatly facilitate the Pentagon’s long held desire to ‘take out’ seven countries in five years – although somewhat behind the original timeline, military conflict is ongoing throughout the Middle East and will allow dramatic escalation in each of those countries without meaningful accountability or Constitutional Congressional oversight.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It didn't take long for me, in my perspective about the Vietnam War, where many of my college mates were drafted into fighting it, and a number of them didn't return, other than in a cheap, aluminum coffin, or returned with PTSD, to realize that there was one thing Karl Marx had said, which made absolute sense; all wars are economic in origin.

At the moment, our troops are fighting and dying for contol over all the oil in the Middle East, and in what currency that oil will be sold; it is just that simple.

Yes, we can wrap these wars in a pretty, red, white, and blue flag, and talk about honor, glory, and protecting the "American Way of Life" (or what passes for it in the Unhinged, Surveilled State of WarMerica); but at the end of the day, as it has been for all the years in which wars have been fought, won, or lost, it is about control of resources, and control of the money in which those resources can be purchased.

IF Congress is unwilling to do its duty, by declaring war, or preventing it, as Constitutionally required, then every single alleged representative should be SACKED in the midterms, and replaced with someone who understands their responsibility here.

The United States will not recognise the result of Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told journalists.

The United States is actively considering oil sanctions on Venezuela and Sullivan said a response to Sunday’s vote would be discussed at a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires on Monday.

“We need to make sure we adhere to our goal which is to target corrupt regime officials and not the people of Venezuela,” Sullivan said. “We don’t want to damage the country in a way that makes it difficult to repair after democracy is restored.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Mr. Sullivan, a memo, please: the US government has already done its best to destroy the Venzuelan economy through sanctions which have desperately degraded the living condition of working Venzuelans, particularly those imposed by President Obama.

And in light of the fact of the reality that Russia and Venezuela are going to trade oil in cryptocurrencies, to skirt current sanctions, what does the US government intend to do when a Russian tanker comes to a Venezuelan port to pick up its oil, attack it?!?

Sir, in the immortal words of my late Grandmother, "The horse is already out of the barn.

So are we to completely withdraw from diplomatic relations; shoot the Russians, when they come for their oil, or attack Venzuela directly?!?

I know that the last choice might be very tempting, in light of the reality that Venzuela has intense oil reserves, and some of the largest in the world; but the optics here suck, sir, and will demonstrate to the world, that the US has lost all its former moral diplomatic desire and ability, and has traded that in for bullets and bombs, in our foreign policy.

As children at Patrick Air Force Base in the early 1980s, Kristen Emery and her siblings fished Florida’s Banana River and strung their catch on the back porch to eat. They dug up the backyard, muddying their hands. When they were thirsty, they drank tap water at their base housing.

Kristen’s nose bled all the time. She was in and out of the emergency room constantly with asthma or other illnesses from kindergarten through second grade.

“They just thought I was a sick kid,” Emery, now 41, says.

When puberty hit at 13, a large mass grew on her neck. The diagnosis was terrifying: Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She spent her teenage years in chemotherapy.

Then they found a tumor on her brother. A trip to the Mayo Clinic found it to be benign.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Please share this with anyone thinking about enlisting. Also, the following, from today's antiwar.com:

Rushan Sibgatullin, 34, and Oleg Schelkanov, 48 died in the terrifying crash
The pair collided at break-neck speed while falling to earth after a skydive
One was killed on impact but the other man died several hours later in hospital
Both men were experienced skydivers who had over 600 jumps between them

A draft resolution backed by Kuwait and by the Palestinian Authority is headed to the UN Security Council this week, seeking the creation of an international force in the Gaza Strip to prevent further Israeli attacks on the area.

The Security Council resolution likely will have a majority of votes, but the US has signaled that they will veto it. Both the US and Israel are feverishly working to try to kill any support for the resolution. Israeli envoy Danny Danon claims the resolution would be a violation of Israel’s sovereignty, and amounts to a support of war crimes.

The draft is unlikely to die in the Security Council, however, with Palestinian officials saying they intend to advance the matter to the UN General Assembly after a US veto. A General Assembly vote would be non-binding, but still significant.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Unfortunately, for all practical intents and purposes, the fate of the Palestinian people may well be sealed; to remain 2nd class citizens, even if they do hold Israeli citizenship and passports, and continue to get gradually marginalized and relegated to the worst areas of Gaza and the West Bank.

Very few of Israel's neighbors will take them in as refugees, and the living conditions at those camps are utterly appalling.

Taking in refugees gives Israel more control of the lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, so host countries understand that even though it would be life-saving for many of these potential refugees, not taking them in puts greater focus on how Israel treats Palestinians.

The the Israeli government and its IDF will never allow an international force to protect Gazan Palestinians, and will continue to do everything in their power to prevent it.

The US has cleared the sale of 3,200 bombs valued at about $45 million, including powerful bunker busters, to Bahrain. The Persian Gulf monarchy is hosting the US 5th Fleet and has been involved in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen.
The order would consist of 1,500 Mark-82 general purpose bombs; 600 Mark-83 bombs; 600 Mark-84 bombs; and 500 BLU-109 “bunker busters,” bombs armed with special warheads designed to penetrate hardened targets, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced on Friday.

The ordnance is intended for Bahrain’s US-made F-16 combat jets, and would come directly from US government stocks. Bahrain “will use these munitions as a deterrent to regional threats, strengthen its homeland defense, and execute counter-terrorism operations,” the agency said, as well as “operate with US-led and US-supported coalition operations.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

I am having a double Picard face-palm, at warp speed, upon reading this article.

These bombs will be most likely used both against peaceful Shiite protestors in Bahrain, who are simply asking for a constitutional monarchy, and against the Yemeni people, like the young Yemeni child in the image below, holding on desperately to his dead father, and refusing to let him go.(warning: very graphic)

"Photos and footage were taken after the bombing, which happened in a remote village in the northwestern province of Hajjah. Appearing to be aged seven or eight, the boy tightly grasps the body of a man, grabbing his shirt and repeating “no, no, no” as rescuers try to take him away. People on the ground told Ruptly the boy insisted his killed father was just sleeping, and would soon wake up and take him to their home village not far from the one that was bombed.

Here is a little prediction. This boy will not feature at prime time in the mainstream media, regardless of how heart-wrenching are his little figure and fruitless defiance. No well-paid anchor with perfect make-up will say in a tearful voice how she cannot look at him. No correspondent will confront the Saudi foreign minister, showing him the pictures, saying: “This is a war crime, sir.” At the UN Security Council, his tragedy will not be used to denounce a criminal regime, killing civilians with impunity."

It is for this reason, that I am asking all of our friends in the independent media who have blogs both nationally and internationally, to credit both the story, written by Mr. Antonov of RT, and this image, by Ruptly, copy this story, and this image, and bump it to the top of their websites; America is colluding in these horrific war crimes in Yemen with both Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and it is high time that a very peaceful,and very public public conversation about this, happens in this country.

And to both Mr. Antonov and Ruptly, thank you for pulling the curtain back and revealing the horrendous consequences of this Saudi-generated, and US and Bahraini-enabled war against the Yemeni people.

In light of growing scientific evidence linking certain insecticides known as neonicotinoid insecticides or neonics to rapidly collapsing bee populations, the European Union voted to place a permanent ban on virtually all use of these bee-killing toxins.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad paid an unannounced visit to Vladimir Putin on Thursday evening at the Russian president's summer home in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi where the two leaders discussed the process for winding down the war in Syria, and notably the reduction of foreign troop presence in the country.

This marks the third such known meeting inside Russia between Assad and President Putin since 2015, and the first since two major instances of external airstrikes on the Syrian government dramatically escalated the prospect for broader war. The first was the April 13th US-led coalition attack involving over one hundred missiles on sites in and around Damascus; and the second was the May 10 Israeli attack on dozens of targets inside Syria in what was the biggest military escalation between the two countries in decades.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It is imminently possible that Putin made this suggestion to Al Assad, as a way to attempt to prevent further Israeli bombing attacks against Syria; unfortunately, however, even if Iran withdraws its military advisors, or troops here, this will be no guarantee that Israel will not continue to bomb Syria, to insure that it remains the captor of Syria's Golan Heights, won militarily in 1967, and from which Israel is illegally selling oil contracts.

Rock is the first known asteroid to have been captured from another star system
The object hopped systems while the sun was part of a packed star cluster
These star systems were so close together that they frequently shared asteroids
Scientists identified the asteroid after they noticed it had an unusual orbit

A 16-year-old Chechen Muslim has admitted to murdering a 7-year-old girl in Vienna, telling police he was in a “bad mood” at the time.

The victim was found in a dumpster, nearly decapitated.

The teen told police he was “having a bad day,” which contributed to his “bad mood” and “general rage” at the time of the vicious stabbing.

The girl, Hadishat, and her killer, Robert K., were familiar to each other as neighbors, family friends and fellow Chechens.

According to reports, he lured her into his vacant apartment, leading her into the bathroom, where he attacked her with a serrated bread knife, stabbing her so savagely in the neck that her head was nearly dismembered.

He eventually wrapped her body in plastic and threw it in a nearby dumpster, which police discovered after seeing her protruding feet.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Model students" do not assassinate young women, because they are in a bad mood!

However, war criminal and arch-Zionist Pompeo doesn't mind at all that the Ex-Mossad Chief Openly Admits & Defends Israel's Medical Aide to al Qaeda Terrorists In Syria, that Israel created Hamas, not to mention Israel's open history of terrorism including the USS Liberty, Lavon Affair, Pollard spy case, 9/11, etc.

On December 29, 2016, the Obama Administration – with three weeks remaining in its term – issued harsh sanctions against Russia over supposed election interference. Two compounds in the United States were closed and 35 Russian diplomats were ordered to leave the country.

In the two years that have elapsed since, it has been learned that the “intelligence” that formed the basis for the sanctions was beyond dubious.

A single unverified “dossier” compiled by an ex-British spy with no discernable connections to Russia was shopped to FISA judges and the media as something real.

The dossier was opposition research by the Hillary Clinton campaign, a fact that was not disclosed and actively hidden by off-the-book transactions through the law firm Perkins Coie.

As a dog that chases its tail, the fake dossier was being used to cause the investigation which itself lent credibility to the notion of Russian interference.

Google has removed most instances of its famous “Don’t be evil” motto from its code of conduct, 18 years after it was first introduced.

The alteration to its charter, which the tech giant distributes to its employees, took place at some point in late April or early May, according to archives hosted by the Wayback Machine website.

The phrase “Don’t be evil” has been adopted into the company’s code of conduct since 2000, as well as it being used as its unofficial motto.

The expression is ingrained into the company’s culture, with it even acting as a Wi-Fi password on the buses that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters in California, sources told Gizmodo.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Hardly surprising, given current revelations as to how Google data is mined, manipulated, and sold.

Techdirt has written many stories about facial recognition systems. But there's a step-change taking place in this area at the moment. The authorities are moving from comparing single images with database holdings, to completely automated scanning of crowds to obtain and analyze huge numbers of facial images in real time. Recently, Tim Cushing described the ridiculously high level of false positives South Wales Police had encountered during its use of automated facial recognition software. Before that, a post noted a similarly unacceptable failure rate of automated systems used by the Metropolitan Police in London last year.

The UK situation is fairly well known. There's been less coverage of automated facial recognition systems in the US, and the Big Brother Report offers some comments from experts about what is happening there. For example, Clare Garvie from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, writes:

Webmaster's Commentary:

Only a society whose leadership is terrified of open rebellion, uses, and evolves technology like this; one could say, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that this is the case in both the US and the UK.

It was almost impossible to estimate what the estimate of last weekend's royal wedding between the Duke and Duchess of Wessex cost the royal family, plus UK taxpayers; and yet, homeless people within the vicinity of of the venue, were swept off the streets, with their sleeping bags (if they had them) removed, theoretically, until after the festivities had ended.

How does a society continue, with standards of living so disparate, until that society winds up cracking apart at the seams?!?

I would have welcomed the opportunity for those images of the homeless, trundled off so as not have been embarrassing to the royal family, to have been Meghan and Harry's "Buddha on the Road" moment, but I don't seriously think that it had any real effect on either of them, nor will it in the future.

The elite always believe, as an article of faith, that poverty is caused by a lack of individual will and courage, and is never the cost, or result, of economic policies put in place, to make the rich of a country, more rich.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company is running out of container space to store water contaminated by tritium outside the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and it's also running out of room for building more tanks, according to Yomiuri Shimbum , a Japanese newspaper, which is creating an intractable problem for the utility, which has been tasked with supervising the cleanup of Fukushima.

The Japanese government has been desperately trying to accelerate the cleanup ahead of the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo - and it's a miracle it hasn't run into this issue sooner. TEPCO is still struggling with how to dispose of the tritium-tainted water. Options discussed have included dumping it into the ocean, but that proposal has angered local fishing communities.

Webmaster's Commentary:

That the executives from TEPCO haven't been run out of town by a furious Japanese public, and completely thrown out of their jobs, because of the rank incompetence which generated this disaster in the first place, is an absolute mystery to me.

China is launching a new satellite on Sunday as part of its ambitious Chang’e-4 mission to make the first-ever landing on the ‘dark side’ of the moon.
The Queqiao relay satellite will be sent to Lagrange L2 Point, where it can maintain communication with both the far side of the moon and Earth. This is vital for phase two of the mission, later this year, when a lander and rover will be sent where no other has gone before – the side of the moon furthest away from Earth.

Here's the launch trajectory, taking the Queqiao Chang'e-4 relay sat to the second Earth-Moon Lagrange point via a lunar swing-by, and reaching it's destination in around 8-9 days. pic.twitter.com/ghOOTDUdEj

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) May 20, 2018
The moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning that we never get to see the other side of it. This makes direct communication impossible but China is hoping to resolve this by using the relay satellite.

The Trump administration escalated its demands on Iran on Monday while giving Tehran a possible loophole if it wants the US to return to the nuclear deal which President Trump unilaterally cancelled last month, laying out a list of demands that Iran has to satisfy for the deal to be restored, including a stop to all uranium enrichment and halt to Iran's support for militant groups in the region.

The administration’s demands were outlined in a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which for the first time spelled out all of the administration’s requirements for a new agreement. Pompeo laid out an onerous list of 12 "basic requirements" on Iran which toughened the nuclear demands and called for a wholesale change to Iran’s military posture in the region, that he says should be included.

Webmaster's Commentary:

What Pompeo has laid out, in these demands, are all the reasons Iran will absolutely not agree to them, setting the stage for an Israeli-desired, US-directed war against it, which is the basic premise for these demands being raised.

This has been the consummate wet dream of the Israeli government for some time now; legitimizing the US government's military attack against Iran, which may well mean war with Russia, as Russian military and civilian leadership have frequently promised Iranian leadership would happen, in the event of an attack against it.

But what people in this country have got to understand, is that Israel expects this war to be waged only at the costs of American blood and American money. Should such a war happen, look for the reinstitution of the draft in this country, and this time, it will be coming not only for our young men, but also our young women as well.

Right now, the Israeli government believes it can talk President Trump into anything that feeds his ego, and his ability to be flattered into making bone-headed decisions, like the one signing off on these 12 demands, or the moving to the US consulate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, is huge.

And although there is no timetable at this moment, for Iran's acquiesence to these demands, it is only a question of time before there is an "or else" deadline tacked on to them.

What this ultimatum will accomplish, will be to push Iran closer to Russia, China, and Europe; and the fact that neither Trump nor Pompeo understands this, does not bode well for peace in the region at all.

At Florida’s Indian River County jail, an autopsy report released last week claimed that a man died from a kratom overdose.

People who use kratom understand that an overdose on the leaf material is about as impossible as overdosing on weed, but for the past several months and in particular since September 2017, several suspicious stories about kratom have circulated in the headlines.

The medical examiner for District 19 in Florida ruled that inmate Zacharriah Simmer’s cause of death was an “accidental kratom overdose.” Mind you, this was county jail not prison.

Just hours before his death, on April 4th he appeared before a judge and had court. The 42 year old man was arrested the day prior on April 3rd.

This story is not only impossible on account of the fact that it’s physically impossible to overdose on kratom, but the amount required for such a hypothetical scenario would be so great, it would be completely impossible to smuggle it into prison.

A company by the name of LocationSmart isn't having a particularly good month.

The company recently received all the wrong kind of attention when it was caught up in a privacy scandal involving the nation's wireless carriers and our biggest prison phone monopoly. Like countless other companies and governments, LocationSmart buys your wireless location data from cell carriers. It then sells access to that data via a portal that can provide real-time access to a user's location via a tailored graphical interface using just the target's phone number.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The existence of this service demonstrates, incontrovertibly, that the 4 th Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding unreasonable search and seizure, is well, and truly, dead.

Looking to Facebook for help with addiction? Take care: the social network is full of predators, and they know where to find vulnerable people. They're sleazy marketers, brokering questionable self-help and inpatient treatment options.

A stranger named Garrett Hall sent Couch a Facebook message. “Hey Lauri [sic], I saw your name on the Affected By Addiction support group, and I had this weird/strong impulse to just reach out,” Hall wrote to Couch. “[A]re you doing ok?” ...

Couch soon got a call from Meghan Calvert, a paid marketer for a treatment center called Pillars Recovery. It’s owned by Darren Orloff, who is part of Affected by Addiction’s volunteer leadership team. Couch, who has a background in sales, knew a sales pitch when she heard it. She told Calvert off for taking advantage of desperate people. ... After the call, Couch was surprised to find that she could not log back in to Affected by Addiction. In fact, she came to realize, she’d been banned.

Webmaster's Commentary:

There are many reasons to leave Facebook, permanently; this is just one of them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has plenty of critics bemoaning its fall from venerable civil-rights champion to leftist fundraising machine, but apparently not in the tech industry. The Alabama-based legal group has watched its influence soar as the go-to consultant on "hate" for top tech firms, including Amazon, Spotify, Lyft and Google-owned YouTube, in the aftermath of the August white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those alliances have both astounded and alarmed conservatives who fear that the center's hotly contested "hate map" is being wielded to deny platforms to mainstream right-of-center groups and viewpoints. Jim Campbell, senior attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, has already seen it happen.

Much of the world condemned the killings in Gaza. Yet the United States, Israel's most important patron, has given it a free hand to do with the Palestinians what it will. Indeed, by moving the embassy to Jerusalem in the first place, Trump sent the implicit message that the U.S. government has given up any pretense of neutrality ... Trump has empowered what's worst in Israel, and as long as he is president, it may be that Israel can kill Palestinians, demolish their homes and appropriate their land with impunity. But some day, Trump will be gone. With hope for a two-state solution nearly dead, current trends suggest that a Jewish minority will come to rule over a largely disenfranchised Muslim majority in all the land under Israel's control.

A far-right activist has been jailed for stirring up racial hatred after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially declined to prosecute him. Jeremy Bedford-Turner, 48, of Lincoln, called for his "soldiers" to liberate England from "Jewish control" in a speech at London's Cenotaph in 2015. The Army veteran was handed a year-long jail term at Southwark Crown Court ... Sentencing Bedford-Turner, of Rudgard Lane, Judge David Tomlinson described his 15-minute speech as "poisonous" and "sinister". In the speech, which was made at a rally against a Jewish neighbourhood watch group on 4 July, Bedford-Turner said "let's free England from Jewish control. Let's liberate this land" ... Bedford-Turner, who speaks Pashtu and Arabic, bowed and saluted about 35 supporters who gave him a standing ovation as he was led to the cells.
Note:It is impossible to overstate the control of Jewish, Zionist, Israeli influence in world and local control.

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan appeared to liken Palestinians killed in ongoing border protests to Nazi casualties in World War II when he tweeted about the death toll in Gaza. Erdan said the number of Palestinians killed at Monday's protest "doesn't indicate anything - just as the number of Nazis who died in the world war doesn't make Nazism something you can explain or understand." The sixth week of the Great Return March protests has been the most deadly, with 55 fatalities reported so far on Monday [May 14]. Erdan placed the blame for the deaths solely on Hamas, which is in power in Gaza. "All responsibility for the bloodshed lies with the leaders of Hamas, who, with Nazi anger, endlessly shed blood to erase from people's memories their own failures in the management of the Gaza Strip. Here it is, the truth." he said.

The Israeli government argues that the crowds of mostly young Palestinians at the Gaza fence offer a lethal threat to peaceful Israelis. The claim is as ludicrous as it is cynical. Even if one or two protesters broke through the fence they would have nowhere to go except into the arms of the Israeli security forces, who could easily detain them ... Normal police methods of arrest and trial would be perfectly adequate to handle the issue. Yet instead, Israeli snipers used live ammunition against demonstrators, wounding thousands in the legs but also killing dozens ... Offers by Hamas to declare a ceasefire or truce with Israel in return for an end to the embargo have been spurned. The result is the hopelessness that encourages young Palestinians to risk their lives at the border fence.

On May 15, the seventieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba - a day of mourning to mark the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 - it's time to put to rest the tired canard that the greatest obstacle to peace is Palestinian violence. Though you wouldn't know it from mainstream reporting, Palestinians have been resisting nonviolently since they were under British colonial rule ... While it's true that some Palestinians have thrown stones, molotov cocktails, and burned tires, no Israelis have been reported killed or injured. And though Hamas has endorsed the protest, it began as a civil society initiative, organized by independent activists, despite Israel's claims to the contrary.

For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph ... While Israel launched some 100 strikes on Syria in recent years, Syrian President Bashar Assad has survived and, with the aid of Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, won his civil war ... Republican leaders often say that we cannot permit "any daylight" between the U.S. position and that of Israel. But can the country that decried for decades the panicked reaction of an Ohio National Guard that shot and killed four students at Kent State University sit silent as scores of unarmed protesters are shot to death and thousands are wounded by Israeli troops in Gaza? Bibi and Israel appear to be on a winning streak. It is difficult to see how, over the long run, it can be sustained.

MSNBC-backed liberals Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski put in work for their deep state masters Monday as they spewed agitprop like banshees over President Donald Trump recent demands for an investigation into an alleged FBI/DOJ spy plot which may have infiltrated the Trump Campaign during the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election.

When the 2018 Billboard Music Awards opened on Sunday (May 20), viewers were expecting a moment of recognition for last week’s tragic school shooting in Texas. Host Kelly Clarkson provided that–but not in the way expected.

Men will be fined for wolf-whistling or making sexual comments towards women in France, as part of new tougher legislation to combat lecherous behaviour.
Those who break the law will face on-the-spot fines of up to €750.

President Donald Trump attacked the credibility of special counsel Robert

President Donald Trump attacked the credibility of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation once again on Sunday, encouraging Republicans and “real Americans” to start “getting tough” on the federal probe.

Possible motive emerges in the horror shooting that took ten lives on Friday
Mother of Shana Fisher says the 16-year-old girl rejected the shooter's advances
Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, is charged with capital murder in the school massacre
Shana's mom says Pagourtzis pursued the girl for months before the shooting
Says she publicly rejected and humiliated him just a week before the murders

Pizza Express workers seen weaving through crowds toward Windsor Castle
The evening delivery followed a lunch that featured about 7,500 items of food
More than 120,000 people descended on the market town to witness wedding

Deer Park (United States) (AFP) - Thirty-six hours after several classmates were gunned down in a massacre, Santa Fe High School athletes took the field Saturday to partake in a longstanding and, for at least one evening, healing Texas pastime: baseball.

Motherhood is messy.
And Giedre Gomes, a 35-year-old photographer who lives in Cedar Lake, Indiana, didn’t sugarcoat anything when she decided to take a series of photographs illustrating what being a mom really looks like for “Mother’s Day.”